News.
Leeds International Film Festival announces full 2024 programme with tickets now on sale
9th October 2024
Screenings of Andrea Arnold’s heartwarming Bird, A Real Pain directed by Jesse Eisenberg and Amy Adams in genre-bending exploration of motherhood Nightbitch
Retrospectives The Weird of Oz celebrates Australian new wave cinema plus innovative new documentaries presented as part of the Cinema Versa strand
Previously announced opening, closing and central night films join and UK premieres of Constellation and Fanonmenon competition titles
Titles in the strands Stuart Croft: Eternal Return and Spice & Fire: The Films of Smita Patil also announced
The 38th edition of the Festival runs from 1st to the 17th November 2024
Wednesday 9 October, Leeds, UK: Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF) has today announced the full programme for its 2024 edition which includes UK premieres, new A-List and innovative new Festival strands showcasing the best in world cinema, retrospectives genre films and documentaries. LIFF is supported by the BFI National Lottery Audience Projects Award.
Established in 1987, Leeds International Film Festival is one of the largest annual film events in the UK and one of the longest, running for 17 days every November in venues across Leeds and West Yorkshire. Presenting over 250 features and shorts every year, with annual submissions of over 5000 from more than 120 countries, LIFF principally showcases and supports films from new and diverse filmmaking talent and which may not receive profile in the UK otherwise.
The 38th edition of the Festival will run from 1st to the 17th November 2024 at venues across the city including events and screenings at Everyman Leeds, Vue Leeds in the Light, Hyde Park Picture House and Howard Assembly Room. Tickets and passes are now on sale.
Constellation is the new name for the Festival’s main programme section, previewing many of the most talked about films of the year and presenting UK Premieres of films from exciting new filmmakers in our feature film competition. The opening and closing films of Constellation this year are both much-anticipated comedy dramas, featuring stand-out lead performances with Kieran Culkin in Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain and Amy Adams in Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch. Acclaimed filmmaker Sean Baker (Tangerine) returns with his Palme d’Or winning drama Anora.
LIFF is also proud to be presenting new work from some of the finest homegrown British filmmaking talent; Andrea Arnold’s Bird, the director’s first fiction feature made in the UK since Wuthering Heights, will screen at the Festival alongside Mike Leigh’s latest film Hard Truths starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Other films from legendary filmmakers in the programme include I’m Still Here from Brazilian director Walter Salles, and hilarious satire Rumours from Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin.
These join previously announced LIFF opening night film, the UK premiere of Carine Tardieu’s compassionate, emotionally engaging The Ties That Bind Us; LIFF closing night film of Shô Miyake’s luminous new film All the Long Nights; a Central Film screening of the of Payal Kapadia’s 2024 Cannes Grand Prix winner All We Imagine As Light; and a special Central Classic Film screening Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s visually stunning masterpiece of the silent era and a stirring paean to nature and rural life in Ukraine, Earth (1930); screening with a new live jazz score from Ukrainian musicians.
Previously announced as screening in the Constellation competition, championing the best new, trailblazing cinema from around the worldwill be: Marcelo Botta’s captivating look at Brazilian village life Betânia; Hala Elkoussy’s surrealist Egyptian fable East of Noon; Roman Bondarchuk’s fake news satire The Editorial Office; Raam Reddy’s subversive and richly imagined The Fable; Eva Trobisch’s haunting social drama Ivo; Lilja Ingolfsdottir’s multilayered character study Loveable; Nelicia Low’s razor sharp social thriller Pierce; Federico Luis’s Cannes Critic Week Grand Prize winner Simon of the Mountain; Saule Bliuvaite’s beautifully cinematic Locarno prizewinner Toxic. Constellation is full of more great new discoveries screening out of competition, including Leonardo Van Dijl’s powerful drama Julie Keeps Quiet and Duong Dieu Linh’s surreal marital drama Don’t Cry, Butterfly.
Cinema Versa brings you some of the most exciting and innovative documentaries of the year representing a broad range of styles and subjects. There’s the UK premieres of Trans Memoria, Swedish artist and filmmaker Victoria Verseau’s poetic and perceptive diary film about her experiences of gender-affirming surgery in Thailand. How to Build a Truth Engine interrogates the information battlefield in a post-truth world with a diverse range of different experts. Two very different films use archive footage in innovative ways, Billy, an intimate and complex portrait of a man with schizophrenia, and It Was All a Dream, a feminist music journalist’s inside view of the formative years of hip hop. Elsewhere, in Grand Theft Hamlet two out of work actors try to stage a version of Hamlet entirely within the video game, Grand Theft Auto. Alex Ross Perry pushes the boundaries with the music documentary in Pavements and The Stimming Pool is a startlingly original artistic representation of the way neurodivergent people interact with the world.
Fanomenon is the home at LIFF for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, dark comedy, cult films, the unclassifiable, and much more. Fanomenon opening film is the UK premiere of writer/director Yang Li’s Escape from the 21st Century which uses a dizzying array of special effects, and choreographs kinetic action that brilliantly integrates comic-book animation with magnificent martial art prowess. The Fanomenon closing film is The Killers, a wildly inventive and entertaining collection of four crime stories from South Korea.
Fanathon film marathons return for LIFF 2024 with Sci-Fi day on 2 November with four new features, including two UK Premieres – mind-bending sci-fi tale The A-Frame and U Are the Universe, screening as a UK premiere, a moving and comic story about an astronaut’s search for connection after he is left alone in space when Earth explodes. Day of the Dead is back on 9 November with four acclaimed new horror films from Belgium, Nigeria, Taiwan and USA showing at Hyde Park Picture House. Including the UK premiere of Else, smart and suspenseful The Weekend, hilarious dark comedy Dead Talents Society and Dead Mail, a surreal horror thriller that blends retro analogue aesthetics with a twisted tale of obsession, murder, and electronic keyboards. The ultimate all-night horror marathon, Night of the Dead returns with a new mix of wild films guaranteed to deliver plenty of thrills, gore, and chills. Screenings include the world premiere of Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round, produced by Joe Swanberg, and Dark Match, an action-packed horror that puts a small-time group of ‘80s pro-wrestlers in a desperate battle for survival.
Previously announced as screening in the Fanomenon competition, showcasing mind-expanding new genre cinema will be: Niles Atallah’s modern queer fairytale Animalia Paradoxa; Ivana Gloria’s Chlorophyll; Thibault Emin’s mesmerising body-horror debut Else; Benjamin Pfohl’s cosmic coming-of-ager Jupiter; Yannis Veslemes’s psychedelic time travel horror She Loved Blossoms More; Pavlo Ostrikov’s post-apocalyptic Ukrainian sci-fi romance U Are the Universe; Joel Potrykus’s jet-black punk rock comedy Vulcanizadora.
Retrospective collection The Weird of Oz explores the wild and often groundbreaking scene of Australian new wave cinema from the 1970s onwards, expressing the growing pains of the country and garnering attention around the world. There’s highway adventures of Mad Max 2, Road Games and Stone; the hyperreal pop images styles of BeDevil and Razorback; vengeful nature in Lost Weekend and The Last Wave; individuals against the world in Celia and Wake in Fright.
This year’s LIFF programme also spotlights the life and work of Indian actress Smita Patill and Leeds artist-filmmaker Stuart Croft. Stuart Croft (1970-2015) was a hugely talented artist-filmmaker from Leeds whose work imaginatively collapsed the boundaries between the art gallery and the cinema. He went from Lawnswood School in Leeds to exhibitions in New York, Venice and Beijing. His work subverts genre conventions and narrative expectations in a playful and thought-provoking way, and his influences range across film history from groundbreaking art films to classic Hollywood cinema.
In partnership with Leeds Art Gallery and The Stuart Croft Foundation, LIFF presents Stuart Croft: Eternal Return, a special season of films that inspired Stuart’s unique vision paired with his own looping moving image works. This season is programmed to complement an immersive exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery (08 November 2024 – 6 April 2025).
LIFF presents a spotlight on films that inspired Croft’s unique vision, paired with his own looping moving image works. His film set murder mystery Century City screens with Luis Bunuel’s classic confined narrative The Exterminating Angel. This shapeshifting noir revenger hit pairs with Jean Pierre Melville’s ice cool thriller Le Samouraï, and his ghost story The Death Waltz accompanies William Greaves’s reflexive cinema landmark Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One. Croft’s other influences range from classic Hollywood genre films like Singin’ in the Rain to the nested narratives of Wojciech Has’s The Saragossa Manuscript.
In Spice & Fire: The Films of Smita Patil, LIFF celebrates the work of legendary performer Smita Patil. Smita Patil was just 31 when she passed away in 1986. With her screen debut in 1975, Smita Patil forged one of the most superlative bodies of work that an actor has ever produced. Across the space of 11 years, Patil collaborated with many of the best filmmakers of her generation. Her disarming beauty and acting prowess made her the iconic face of Parallel Cinema, India’s first post-colonial art film movement (1968 – 1995). This unique retrospective will aim to open a door into the world of Smita Patil, celebrating her films, activism, and enduring stardom.
This exciting career retrospective includes a 4k restoration of The Churning, a landmark film that tells the story of a rural cooperative milk movement in Gujarat, India. Chidambaram, Patil’s only collaboration with Keralan auteur Govindan Aravindan tells the story of Shankaran, a cowherd whose attraction to his friend’s wife, Shivagami (played by Patil), leads to tragic consequences. Bengali director Utpalendu Chakrabarty’s Debshishu features a tour de force performance from Patil in one of her last roles, embodying the strength and despair of a woman forced to endure unimaginable hardship. In Search of Famine explores the haunting legacy of the 1943 Bengal famine that resulted in the deaths of at least three million people. Audiences can look forward to an introduction to Smita Patil on 2 November followed by a screening of Mirch Masala, featuring Patil in what was arguably her most iconic role of Sonbai, imbuing the film with a memorable feminist and anti-colonial power.
LIFF continues to support short filmmaking with a whole programme section dedicated to them and eight dedicated competitions. This year the festival welcomed a new team of programmers who have considered 1000s of short films between them and made the final selections audiences will see at LIFF Shorts 2024. From 6 to 9 November, LIFF will present the eight competitions including the Academy Award®-qualifying Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition – named after the Leeds pioneer who made the world’s first moving images in 1888 – and the World Animation Competition. The other competitions include those for British and Yorkshire shorts, documentaries, screendance, queer shorts and music videos. The competitions culminate on 9 November with an awards event at Howard Assembly Room when the juries will announce the winning films which will all be screened on the night too. LIFF Shorts is sponsored by Stewarts.